Roger and Me

Michael Moore’s Roger and Me may be the most successful of his films that I have seen. It drew me in and kept me interested and entertained throughout, and left me thinking about the issues addressed long after the credits rolled. Notwithstanding a sometimes negative public image in many people’s eyes, it is hard to argue that Moore does not do a masterful job of making himself a very like-able protagonist. He is funny, smart, and self-deprecating from the film’s first shot. Even when showing up for one of his trademark ambush interviews, Moore restrains himself (on camera anyway) in that he is almost excruciatingly polite as far as his words go, a technique which unfailingly makes his targets or those who stand in his way look like uncompassionate, and sometimes downright belligerent, buffoons.

The entire film worked for me, but no scene stands out stronger than Moore’s use of decoupage and asynchronous sound in one of the final sequences. We see and hear a large Black family being evicted from their home just days before Christmas (at least that is how it appears - Moore undoubtedly bends timelines to create his narrative) intercut with GM Chairman Roger Smith giving his annual holiday address. A tiny child sits atop garbage bags full of his family’s possessions, his mother screaming and and swearing while we hear Smith extolling the virtues of the GM “family” and its commitment to workers throughout the year.

Smith unknowingly gives Moore a gift in his amazingly ironic choice to reference Dicken’s A Christmas Carol in his speech. I do not have any idea of the words he said, as the moment I heard “Dickens” in conjunction with the visuals being presented onscreen I could think of Smith in only one way: as the greedy, unrepetent (initially anyway) Ebeneezer Scrooge, taking advantage of the loyal workers that make up the GM workforce. The down and out GM worker takes on the role of Bob Cratchit of course, but no matter how hard Moore tries its unlikely the two will ever sit down for Christmas dinner together. The reality of the situation, of course, is much more complicated. Moore’s talent is in that he simplifies issues to the point where there is only one way of looking at things.

Is this unfair? I don’t think so. We aren’t presented with this sequence until the end of the film, and we’ve spent nearly the entire documentary presented with evidence in support off Moore’s argument that Flint and its workers are slowly being destroyed by the very company that built the community. And while Smith takes on the film’s title role, Moore gives us plenty of villains throughout (a technique he repeats in virtually all of his films). At no time does Moore appear an unbiased observer or participant - from the beginning of the film he reveals his allegiance to Flint and a family who has been working for GM for years. Often, viewers seek “both sides of the story,” something they’ll never get from Moore. As long as one doesn’t let their expectations get in the way of hearing and seeing the arguments made by a filmmaker, they can gain quite a bit from the experience of watching a movie like Roger and Me.